Talk:Parental leave in the United States/Archives/2019

Edits and additions to Current legislation section

I've added, copyedited and cited new sources for the current legislation section. The current legislation section of the Wikipedia page was lacking in many areas. (a) The information was outdated and frankly, there was very little about it and the issues surrounding it. (b) The section was brief to an extent where a lot of the writing choices did not flow easily together and may have not been prepared well for someone who really knew nothing about federal legislation in regards to maternity leave; in other words, it followed a skim version rather than a guided version. (c) Lastly, this section lacked expansion in terms of the definition of statistics and laws mentioned, and adequate citations to back up the fullness of federal legislation of maternity leave.

Extended text

Current section: The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (or FMLA), signed into law during President Bill Clinton's first term, mandates a minimum of 12 weeks unpaid leave to mothers for the purpose of attending to a newborn or newly adopted child.[17] However, the act does not attain universal coverage as it includes several limiting stipulations. In order to receive maternity leave, employees must work in a firm of 50 or more employees, maintain employment with the same business for 12 months and have accumulated at least 1,250 working hours over those 12 months. As of 2012, 59% of American employees were eligible under the FMLA.[18]

The FMLA is the only law that addresses family leave. Two other Federal laws, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, provide some additional protection for parents on the birth of a child.[1]

New Section: In the U.S. parents are federally protected under The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) to go on maternity or family leave after the adoption or birth of a child. Under this law, legal parents are protected for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (per year). The FMLA ensures the job security of parents/employees but does not protect employers who go on paid leave with their employers. Receiving the correct payment from being on leave is between the firm and the employee. However, some state laws that do protect and guarantee employees for paid family leave (see State Legislation section). Additionally, the FMLA defines “parents” as biological, adoptive, step or foster parent who stood in loco parentis or “in the place of a parent”. Parents do not include parent-in-laws though.

This paragraph is for employees who are seeking to get paid using their firm’s extended policies on leaves. If you choose to go on maternity or family leave, The Employee’s Guide to Family and Medical Leave Act, states that you can sometimes use your unspent sick time, vacation time, personal time, etc., saved up with your employer at the same time of your FMLA leave so that you continue to get paid. Importantly though, in order to use such leave, “you must follow your employer’s normal leave rules such as submitting a leave form or providing advance notice. Even if you don’t want to use your paid leave, your employer can require you to use it during your FMLA leave”.

If you are choosing to use the FMLA to go on regular unpaid leave without any extended or paid leave, it’s important to know the qualifications beforehand. The FMLA actually has several limiting stipulations and leaves out certain employee’s conditions such as temp workers and trans folks, so only certain employees are eligible. In order to receive maternity leave protections under FMLA, employees must:

• work for a covered employer;
• have worked 1,250 hours during the 12 months prior to the start of leave; (special hours of service rules apply to airline flight crew members)
• work at a location where the employer has 50 or more employees within 75 miles; and
• have worked for the employer for 12 months.

The 12 months of employment are not required to be consecutive in order for the employee to qualify for FMLA leave. In general, only employment within seven years is counted unless the break in service is (1) due to an employee’s fulfillment of military obligations, or (2) governed by a collective bargaining agreement or other written agreement.

The FMLA is the only law that federally protects American employees who go on maternity or family leave their resumed job security. It was signed into law during President Bill Clinton's first term in 1993 and revised on February 23rd, 2015 to include same-sex parents and spouses. Two other Federal laws, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act(PDA) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (PPACA, also known as the Affordable Care Act, the ACA or Obamacare) amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, provide some additional protection for parents on the birth of a child. For instance, the PDA upholds maternity leave by arguing that employees who give temporarily disabled folks a disability leave should give pregnant women maternity leave with the same protections and benefits. This PDA is essentially arguing that pregnant women should have rights to the same paid of unpaid leave that temporarily disabled workers are afforded by their employers. If an employer offers this protection to temporarily disabled workers then PDA says that pregnant women should also be protected using the same processes and same benefits. Additionally, in 2014 the PPACA amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act made it so that all insurance companies had to include maternity coverage in individual insurance plans. Therefore filling the gap for unemployed women with individual insurance coverage plans to be able to afford the prenatal and postnatal pregnancy care that they need to have a healthy baby. Maternity care came to include:

• Outpatient services, such as prenatal and postnatal doctor visits, gestational diabetes screenings, lab studies, medications, etc.
• Inpatient services, such as hospitalization, physician fees, etc.
• Newborn baby care
• Lactation counseling and breast-pump rental

These federal laws and amendments have increased accessibility and quality of care for prenatal and postnatal mothers and families. For example, before the Affordable Care Act, only 12% of insurance plans sold in the individual market included maternity coverage. Also, according to a journal study on FMLA by researchers at the University of Maryland, it was found that mothers who benefitted from FMLA were returned to the same job and sooner than before FMLA thus showing the impact of job stability for mothers. Nonetheless, many employees are still ineligible for the FMLA. According to the Family and Medical Leave Report in 2012, only 59% of American employees were eligible under the FMLA. Additionally, employees who returned back after FMLA, women exclusively, were given lower wages than the ones to when they left. This comes from the same study by researchers at the University of Maryland, as aforementioned. It should be said that these lower wages may have not been permanent since the study only went to highlight women’s experience with maternity leave two years after they leave.

In recent polls from 2017, Democrats and Republicans both are in high support of federal funding for paid maternity and family leave. According to a study done by the Brookings Institute, a non-profit think tank in D.C., 71% of Republicans and 83% of Democrats support for a paid leave policy. Although the study did not reach a particular compromise on how the policies should work, who should pay for it, how much, and other concerns that might factor into creating a universal paid parental leave policy, they did reach a conclusion. Amongst the diverse group of researchers with different political and economic views, everyone believed that it is worthwhile to consider a federal paid leave policy. One important reason for this is because “The US is the only advanced country that provides no public support to new parents”. This study provides a discourse on paid leave in the U.S. that involves many views but seems to come to the conclusion that the U.S. is in need of a parental paid leave to help new parents out.

The U.S. does not presently have a federal paid maternity and family leave act. Some states, however, do include paid leave legislation for family members. States like California, New Jersey, and New York have pioneered paid leave legislature in their respective states. Reasons for paid leave might include higher job security for women and to reduce women’s need for public assistance. A study by the Institute for Women’s Research has also shown that paid leave could reduce employer costs and lead to U.S. economic growth. Also, paid family leave has been shown to increase the health of the family by lowering infant mortality rates. Paid family leave would also allow low-income families the ability to take care of their family members without having to sacrifice time and money. Reasons for not having a protected paid family leave policy in place might be justified by the fact that there are limited economic resources to sustain a program. Additionally, some may disagree with the overreach of the government taking on the responsibility to keep families afloat while on leave. Compared to some other countries, the U.S. remains behind in terms of maternity leave legislature.

Please let me know if there are certain edits/edits/sources etc. that might need to be fixed. Also, would it be more benefical to create a federal legislation section rather than a current legislation section. Thank you. Mgrant757 (talk) 06:04, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

References

Biased Language

I've nominated the article for a Point Of View check.

While informative, the article is also written with left-leaning phrasing. The slanted language comes out the heaviest in the Foreign Comparisons section.

Whenever you say the United States (or any country or state) "provides" maternity leave, you'd be more honest if you wrote that said entity "mandates" maternity leave instead. The government of a country is not the entity giving the maternity leave. It is mandating that employers (including itself when applicable) give maternity leave.

Amaroq64 (talk) 12:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

This is very sparse and kind of disingenuous. The language use in this article is not necessarily bias and your argumentation does not show that. This is more WP:POINT than anything else. Coltsfan (talk) 18:14, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

How else should a government possibly provide maternity leave than by mandating it from employers? --Yhdwww (talk) 18:42, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

In the maternal health section, the article used a reference does not agree with the text that is written on the page. While the reference article clearly says that there may be some change in frequency, actual benefits of longer leave are inconclusive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.212.248.224 (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I second this as it is less of an informative article than it is a "persuasive" one. 47.12.96.135 (talk) 19:19, 28 July 2019 (UTC)